Inside the Star

Andy Richter is Conan O'Brien's new old sidekick

The more things change ... Even as he hands over his Late Night spot to newbie Jimmy Fallon, Conan O'Brien has named his new Tonight Show wingman – the Ed McMahon to his Johnny – and it's ... his old pal Andy Richter.

Even as he hands over his Late Night spot to newbie Jimmy Fallon, Conan O'Brien has named his new Tonight Show wingman – the Ed McMahon to his Johnny – and it's ... his old pal Andy Richter.

Stop me if this sounds familiar. Richter did stellar service in the same capacity back when Conan inherited Late Night from Letterman.

Letterman, meanwhile, is reportedly about to sign a 10-year extension of his CBS contract, so he's not going anywhere. Which means that Craig Ferguson, with Letterman as producer, is also relatively secure.

They'll repeat the gimmick next Monday with Ferguson and a much more interesting co-host, Big Bang Theory's brilliant Jim Parsons, in character as persnickety brainiac Sheldon Cooper.

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In other breaking NBC news, a start date has finally been announced for the new Amy Poehler sitcom, Parks and Recreation.

The much-anticipated Office-style mockumentary will debut April 9, simulcast here on Citytv.

Back in January at the TV critics' tour, P & R was one of the few scripted shows NBC had to promote. And back then, it was barely that – with production yet to start, they could only hand out the "table read" first draft of the initial episode's script.

Which was, on paper, very funny, and apparently ideally suited to Poehler's distinctive comic style.

"I am a spy and I can time-travel, and I'm wearing someone else's face," she wryly says of her role. In fact, Poehler plays a mid-level small-town public servant who sees herself as a political power-player.

"(In) most comedies, the lead character suffers from being not very self-aware," she allows. "Leslie is an optimist and she's really ambitious, and she's really kind of hoping that the place she is now is not the place she's going to stay.

"So she's kind of struggling ... to try to make her mark. And, along the way, she's deluded."

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Of the many questionable commercials currently littering the prime-time landscape, there are three I find particularly galling.

None more so than the Friday the 13th-style Kia Soul car spot, part of an ongoing campaign spoofing clichéd plot scenarios by adding an element of slack-jawed auto worship.

To wit(less): Giggly, barely clad college girls cavort inside a remote cabin. Heavy-breathing masked stalker type emerges from the woods. Cut to morning: the girls are no longer cavorting, but lying motionless, strewn about the cabin like broken Barbies.

But wait, they haven't been mercilessly butchered! Turns out they're only sleeping! The killer is still outside, having been distracted by the Kia's clearly dazzling interior. Which we never actually get to see.

Another offender, the Hershey's "chocolate couple" spot, at least has the virtue of depicting the product.

That being said, I find the notion of animate chocolate people more than a little unsettling, given the possibility that they might one day mate, producing a litter of adorable little Hershey's Kisses.

But, as I say, sentience aside, they are at least using chocolate to sell us chocolate.

Very unlike the creepy chocolate Axe guy.

These are men's hair and hygiene products. Chocolate does not traditionally lend itself to a flowing, healthy mane and pheromones redolent with manly musk.

Worse still, our cheery Chocolate Man – this is actually a real guy in a brown rubber costume – gets eaten up, a little bit at a time, until a passing car cleanly lops off an arm.

This after a leering old lady breaks off a chunk of his right butt cheek, and he snaps off and grinds up his own nose to sprinkle on some admiring hotties' ice cream cones.

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